Plenary Lecture

	Shyam PRABHAKAR (A-STAR, Singapore) Lecture Date & Time: May 28 (Thu), 11:10-11:50, Room 205 Title: Spatial omics reveals intra-tumor malignant cell diversity shaped by microenvironmental cues in colorectal cancer

[Biography]
Shyam Prabhakar obtained a B.Tech in Electronics Engineering from IIT-Madras and a PhD in Applied Physics from Stanford University. He received the 2001 American Physical Society PhD thesis award for Beam Physics and received postdoctoral training at Stanford and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. His lab at the Genome Institute of Singapore uses spatial & single-cell assays and novel algorithms to tackle common diseases. Major initiatives include leading the Asian Immune Diversity Atlas (AIDA) consortium and the TISHUMAP spatial omics programme for target discovery. He serves on the Human Cell Atlas (HCA) Executive Committee and co-leads the HCA Genetic Diversity Network and Data Ecosystem Oversight group.

	Bo WANG (University of Toronto, Canada) Lecture Date & Time: May 28 (Thu), 15:50-16:30, Room 205 Title: How to Build Virtual Cell

[Biography]
Dr. Bo Wang is a tenured Associate Professor in the Departments of Computer Science and Laboratory Medicine & Pathobiology at the University of Toronto, and the inaugural Temerty Professor in AI Research and Education in Medicine. He serves as Senior Vice President and Head of Biomedical AI at Xaira Therapeutics, as well as Chief AI Scientist at the University Health Network, Canada's largest research hospital. Dr. Wang also holds a CIFAR AI Chair at the Vector Institute.

He received his PhD in Computer Science from Stanford University in 2017. His research lies at the intersection of machine learning, computational biology, and computer vision, with a focus on their applications in biomedicine. Dr. Wang's pioneering work in these fields has been recognized through numerous prestigious honours, including the Gairdner Early Career Researcher Award, a Canada Research Chair, and most recently, membership in the Royal Society of Canada's College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists.

	Steven McCarroll (Harvard Medical School, USA) Lecture Date & Time: May 28(Thu), 16:50-17:30, Room 205 Title: The ticking DNA clock: How lifelong somatic expansion of a DNA repeat leads to neurodegeneration Supported by

[Biography]
Steven McCarroll and the scientists in his lab use human genetics, biological experiments, and single-cell genomics to recognize and understand the ways in which genes and genetic variation sculpt the human brain’s functions and vulnerabilities. The McCarroll lab develops new experimental and computational approaches to analyze brain tissue and genomic DNA, then applies them to try to understand brain function and disorders.

Scientists in the McCarroll lab:
• invented the technology for droplet-based single-cell genomics (Drop-seq)
• discovered clonal hematopoiesis, a common pre-cancerous condition in which the blood is populated with clones of individual cells with specific somatic mutations
• discovered the contribution of the complement component 4 genes to schizophrenia and lupus
• discovered SNAP, the close coordination of neuronal and astrocyte gene expression in the brain
• discovered that the pathogenesis of Huntington’s disease results from somatic expansion of the disease-causing CAG repeat in the striatum and cerebral cortex

Work in the McCarroll lab today is trying to uncover the key molecular and cellular processes underlying DNA-repeat disorders, schizophrenia, and bipolar disorder.

McCarroll was originally a student of math and economics before his college roommate and friend, in their last year of college, inspired him to pursue biology. McCarroll obtained his Ph.D. in neuroscience in Cori Bargmann's lab (at the University of California at San Francisco) and pursued postdoctoral research with David Altshuler (at Massachusetts General Hospital). He is an HHMI Investigator, an institute member of the Broad Institute, and the Dorothy and Milton Flier Professor of Biomedical Science and Genetics at Harvard Medical School.

	Michael KARIN (Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute, USA) Lecture Date & Time: May 29 (Fri), 11:00-11:40, Room 205 Title: The intestinal epithelial barrier and neuroimmune network control fatty liver disease pathogenesis Co-organized by

[Biography]
Michael Karin received a PhD in Molecular Biology from UCLA in 1979 and conducted postdoctoral research with Prof. Beatrice Mintz at Fox Chase Cancer Center from 1979 to 1980 and with Prof. John Baxter at UCSF from 1980 to 1983. He served as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Microbiology at USC School of Medicine from 1983 to 1985 and, in 1986, joined the Department of Pharmacology at UCSD School of Medicine, where he rose through the ranks to become a Distinguished Professor until his retirement in 2024. That same year, Karin joined the Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Research Institute as the Director of the Center for Metabolic and Liver Diseases.

Throughout his academic career, Karin investigated stress and inflammation signaling, employing a full range of experimental approaches from biochemistry and molecular cell biology to animal pathophysiology. By discovering how infection, inflammation, radiation, or environmental stressors activate AP-1, NF-κB, and other transcription factors, he explored how these processes contribute to the pathogenesis of cancer, as well as degenerative and metabolic diseases. His group elucidated fundamental mechanisms by which inflammation and obesity promote tumor development and contribute to type II diabetes and insulin resistance, and was among the first to highlight the role of inflammation in metabolic disease.

Karin’s group established how members of the IL-6 cytokine family control the development of colorectal (CRC) and liver (HCC) cancers through activation of STAT3 and YAP, and identified cell type–specific mechanisms by which NF-κB activation via IκB kinases (IKK)—which his group was the first to discover—affects the pathogenesis of various cancers. His research also demonstrated that not only innate immune cells, such as macrophages, but also adaptive immune cells, including T regulatory cells and B lymphocytes, contribute to tumorigenesis. This body of work helped to establish the field of Inflammation and Cancer.

More recently, Karin’s group demonstrated the existence of immunosuppressive plasma cells and their role in negatively regulating immunosurveillance and immunotherapy. His current work focuses on HCC, CRC, and pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC). The team has developed robust mouse models for studying non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH)-induced HCC and chronic pancreatitis–accelerated PDAC, using them to discover how adaptive immunity controls HCC development and to investigate the role of the autophagy substrate p62 in inflammation and HCC/PDAC pathogenesis. They discovered that activation of the p62–KEAP1–NRF2 cascade confers resistance to autophagy inhibitors, leading to the development of a new PDAC and HCC therapeutic approach targeting autophagy and macropinocytosis. These mouse models have also been used to study how metabolism and nutrition affect NASH and HCC development, with a focus on the adverse effects of fructose and alcohol intake and exposure to toxicants.

	Peter TONTONOZ (University of California, Los Angeles, USA) Lecture Date & Time: May 29 (Fri), 13:50-14:30, Room 205 Title: New Pathways in Lipid Metabolism

[Biography]
Peter Tontonoz is the Frances and Albert Piansky Endowed Chair and Distinguished Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine and of Biological Chemistry at the University of California, Los Angeles. Dr. Tontonoz received his B.A. from Wesleyan University and his M.D. and Ph.D. from Harvard Medical School.

Dr. Tontonoz’s laboratory endeavors to understand regulatory pathways that govern cholesterol, fatty acid and phospholipid metabolism. His work has helped to reveal fundamental mechanisms by which animals maintain cellular and whole-body lipid homeostasis. His group has elucidated pathways for the control of lipid uptake, transport and efflux, and has shown how these pathways impact the function of immune cells and metabolic tissues in both physiology and disease. Dr. Tontonoz has an h-index of 117, has published more than 250 research articles, and his work has been cited more than 73,000 times.

Dr. Tontonoz is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Medicine, the American Society of Clinical Investigation, and the Association of American Physicians. He has received a number of national and international awards, including the Stanley J. Korsmeyer Award from the American Society of Clinical Investigation, the Basic Science Award and Jeffrey Hoeg Award from the American Heart Association, the Richard Weitzman and Gerald D. Aurbach Awards from the Endocrine Society, and the J.C. Fruchart Award from the International Atherosclerosis Society. Dr. Tontonoz serves on a number of editorial boards, including those of PNAS, Genes & Development, the Journal of Clinical Investigation.

	Gou Young KOH (IBS/KAIST, Korea) Lecture Date & Time: May 29 (Fri), 14:50-15:30, Room 205 Title: Meningeal lymphatics: A Novel Pathway for Brain Clearance

[Biography]
Over the past three decades, Prof. Gou Young Koh has devoted his career to discovering and elucidating growth factors that regulate the microvasculature, including those that shape tumor vessels. He and his research team have made a number of influential advances and breakthroughs in the fields of angiogenesis and lymphangiogenesis. Notably, they engineered several potent modulators of angiogenesis—three angiopoietin-based proteins: COMP-Ang1, DAAP, and ABTAA—arising from their blinding insights and inventive strategies. Koh has also made seminal contributions to defining why tumor vasculatures are leaky, hypoxic, unstable, and drug-impermeable; to normalizing tumor vessels with a Tie2 activator to delay tumor growth and metastasis; and to identifying the roles of VEGF-A/VEGFR2, VEGF-C/VEGFR3, and angiopoietin/Tie2 signaling in governing organotypic angiogenesis and vascular homeostasis. Recently, he has been leading landmark work revealing essential regulators that preserve the integrity of specialized lymphatic vessels, including the meningeal lymphatics and their connections that enable CSF drainage. In recognition of his exceptional scientific achievements and lasting impact on biomedical research, he has been honored with the Kyung-Am Prize (2011), the Asan Award in Medicine (2012), the Samsung Ho-Am Prize in Medicine (2018), and the Top Scientist Award of Korea (2023).

Kyung-Ahm Lecture

	Jun R. HUH (Harvard Medical School, USA) Lecture Date & Time: May 27 (Wed), 17:50-18:35, Room 205 Title: Unexpected roles of interleukin 17 and identification of its target cells

[Biography]
Dr. Huh received his Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology and completed his postdoctoral training at NYU School of Medicine as a Jane Coffin Childs Memorial Fund Fellow. He has been recognized with the NIH Pathway to Independence Award and the Smith Family Award for Excellence in Biomedical Research, and was named a Searle Scholar in 2015 and a Pew Scholar in 2016. In 2019, he was selected as an investigator in the Burroughs Wellcome Fund Program in the Pathogenesis of Infectious Disease. In 2025, he received the 20th Kyung-Am Prize for Life Sciences.

Dr. Huh's laboratory investigates how the immune system interacts with the nervous system, with a particular focus on how cytokines modulate behavior and neurological symptoms. His group is also interested in identifying host- and bacteria-derived factors that regulate inflammation in the mammalian gut.

Special Lecture

	KoonHo RHA (NAVER CARE, Korea) Lecture Date & Time: May 29 (Fri), 15:50-16:20, Room 205 Title: Digital Healthcare 2026: The Era of Generative AI Co-organized by

[Biography]
Dr. Koon Ho Rha is the Director of NAVER Healthcare Lab, Korea. NAVER is Korea’s premier IT company, services include search engine, on-line shopping (NAVER SHOPPING), fintech (NAVER PAY), Cloud services (NAVER CLOUD) and entertainment (eg. WEBTOON).

Before joining NAVER in 2021, Dr. Rha was Professor of Urology and Robotic and Minimally Invasive Surgery Center. He received both his premedicine education magna cum laude and his M.D. degree from the Yonsei University, Seoul. Dr. Rha was trained during his urological rotating residency training at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. He underwent fellowship training in minimally invasive and laparoscopic surgery at the Johns Hopkins Medical Institution as Engineering and Urology endowed fellow, and served as visiting Assistant Professor in Urology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. During his stay, he also completed “Business in Medicine” a 1-year MBA program at the School of Business Administration and Education.

In 2005 at Yonsei University Dr. Rha set up the East Asia’s first robotic surgery program which now has the most robotic cases as a single hospital in the world with 35,000 cases. During next 15 years, Dr. Rha has performed the most cases in Asia with more than 3700 cases of robotic cases. Dr. Rha also led Korean surgical robot clinical trial which resulted in KFDA approval in August 2017. He has given more than 550 lectures on robotic surgery and performed live surgery or proctored more than 60 occasions in 15 countries including US, China, Japan, Taiwan, Czech Republic, Singapore, Hong Kong, Saudi Arabia, India, Malaysia, Italy, Kuwait, Vietnam and France. Dr. Rha has more than 350 peer-reviewed scientific publications on minimally invasive urological surgery.

On administrative side, he has served as the Associate Dean of Faculty Affairs, Chief Operating Officer and the Chief Strategy Officer at Yonsei University Health System which now serves as foundation of basic knowledge at NAVER Healthcare Lab developing various innovative, AI -based healthcare services.

Special Clinical Session

	Takayuki YOSHINO (National Cancer Center Hospital East, Japan) Lecture Date & Time: May 27 (Wed), 14:45-15:20, Room 205 Title: Striving for a Quantum Leap on Molecular Residual Disease (MRD) Clinical Development: Insights from CIRCULATEJAPAN& SCRUM- MONSTAR Co-organized by

[Biography]
Dr. Takayuki Yoshino, M.D., Ph.D., currently works at the National Cancer Center Hospital East in Chiba, Japan, where he is the Deputy Director of Hospital, Director, Department of Global Oncology, Head, Division for the Promotion of Drug and Diagnostic Development, and Chief for the Department of Gastrointestinal Oncology.

Dr. Yoshino has a particular interest in chemotherapy for gastrointestinal cancers, especially for colorectal cancer, where he focuses on various investigational new agents and translational research regarding potential predictive and prognostic biomarkers. He has had over 400 peer-review scholar journal publications on CRC. In addition, he holds several professional appointments, serving on a Guidelines Steering Committee member of ESMO, a chair of Pan-Asian adapted ESMO Guideline for CRC, an advisory committee member of ASCO Breakthrough, and the Chairman of both JSCO and JSMO. He was the first Japanese plenary speaker at ASCO 2022 Annual Meeting (5th /JUN/ 2022).

	Sun Young RHA (Yonsei University, Korea) Lecture Date & Time: May 27 (Wed), 15:20-15:55, Room 205 Title: Changing treatment paradigm of advanced gastric cancer with insights from tumor microenvironment biology

[Biography]
Medical Oncology, Yonsei Cancer Center
Department of Internal Medicine, Yonsei University College of Medicine
Director of Songdang Institute for Cancer Research, Yonsei Univ. College of Medicine
Chairman, Board of Directors, Korea Cancer Association (KCA), Seoul, Korea
Chair of International Cooperation Committee, National Academy of Medicine of Korea
Professor Rha is a clinical and translational researcher, leading “Gastric Cancer Research team” and “phase I and early phase clinical trial team” of Yonsei Cancer Center. Her research interests include therapeutic strategies and new drug development, multiomics-based biomarker development in gastric cancer, renal cell cancer and urothelial carcinoma. She has published over 400 peer-reviewed articles. As a clinical researcher, she has been involved in various global Phase I-III clinical trials including many novel targeted and immune-oncologic agents.
She is currently actively working as executive committee members in many academic societies, including Korean Cancer Association (KCA), Korean Cancer Study Group (KCSG), Korean Society of Medical Oncology (KSMO) and Korean Association of IRB (KAIRB). She also serves as a chair of scientific committee, IGCA(International Gastric Cancer Association), a key member of ESMO GI education committee and GI preceptorship for ESMO. Also she is working as a co-chair of program committee, AACR 2026 and ESMO 2027.

Plenary Lecture

	Shyam PRABHAKAR (A-STAR, Singapore) Lecture Date & Time: May 28 (Thu), 11:10-11:50, Room 205 Title: Spatial omics reveals intra-tumor malignant cell diversity shaped by microenvironmental cues in colorectal cancer

[Biography]
Shyam Prabhakar obtained a B.Tech in Electronics Engineering from IIT-Madras and a PhD in Applied Physics from Stanford University. He received the 2001 American Physical Society PhD thesis award for Beam Physics and received postdoctoral training at Stanford and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. His lab at the Genome Institute of Singapore uses spatial & single-cell assays and novel algorithms to tackle common diseases. Major initiatives include leading the Asian Immune Diversity Atlas (AIDA) consortium and the TISHUMAP spatial omics programme for target discovery. He serves on the Human Cell Atlas (HCA) Executive Committee and co-leads the HCA Genetic Diversity Network and Data Ecosystem Oversight group.

	Bo WANG (University of Toronto, Canada) Lecture Date & Time: May 28 (Thu), 15:50-16:30, Room 205 Title: How to Build Virtual Cell

[Biography]
Dr. Bo Wang is a tenured Associate Professor in the Departments of Computer Science and Laboratory Medicine & Pathobiology at the University of Toronto, and the inaugural Temerty Professor in AI Research and Education in Medicine. He serves as Senior Vice President and Head of Biomedical AI at Xaira Therapeutics, as well as Chief AI Scientist at the University Health Network, Canada's largest research hospital. Dr. Wang also holds a CIFAR AI Chair at the Vector Institute.

He received his PhD in Computer Science from Stanford University in 2017. His research lies at the intersection of machine learning, computational biology, and computer vision, with a focus on their applications in biomedicine. Dr. Wang's pioneering work in these fields has been recognized through numerous prestigious honours, including the Gairdner Early Career Researcher Award, a Canada Research Chair, and most recently, membership in the Royal Society of Canada's College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists.

	Steven McCarroll (Harvard Medical School, USA) Lecture Date & Time: May 28(Thu), 16:50-17:30, Room 205 Title: The ticking DNA clock: How lifelong somatic expansion of a DNA repeat leads to neurodegeneration Supported by

[Biography]
Steven McCarroll and the scientists in his lab use human genetics, biological experiments, and single-cell genomics to recognize and understand the ways in which genes and genetic variation sculpt the human brain’s functions and vulnerabilities. The McCarroll lab develops new experimental and computational approaches to analyze brain tissue and genomic DNA, then applies them to try to understand brain function and disorders.

Scientists in the McCarroll lab:
• invented the technology for droplet-based single-cell genomics (Drop-seq)
• discovered clonal hematopoiesis, a common pre-cancerous condition in which the blood is populated with clones of individual cells with specific somatic mutations
• discovered the contribution of the complement component 4 genes to schizophrenia and lupus
• discovered SNAP, the close coordination of neuronal and astrocyte gene expression in the brain
• discovered that the pathogenesis of Huntington’s disease results from somatic expansion of the disease-causing CAG repeat in the striatum and cerebral cortex

Work in the McCarroll lab today is trying to uncover the key molecular and cellular processes underlying DNA-repeat disorders, schizophrenia, and bipolar disorder.

McCarroll was originally a student of math and economics before his college roommate and friend, in their last year of college, inspired him to pursue biology. McCarroll obtained his Ph.D. in neuroscience in Cori Bargmann's lab (at the University of California at San Francisco) and pursued postdoctoral research with David Altshuler (at Massachusetts General Hospital). He is an HHMI Investigator, an institute member of the Broad Institute, and the Dorothy and Milton Flier Professor of Biomedical Science and Genetics at Harvard Medical School.

Plenary Lecture

	Michael KARIN (Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute, USA) Lecture Date & Time: May 29 (Fri), 11:00-11:40, Room 205 Title: The intestinal epithelial barrier and neuroimmune network control fatty liver disease pathogenesis Co-organized by

[Biography]
Michael Karin received a PhD in Molecular Biology from UCLA in 1979 and conducted postdoctoral research with Prof. Beatrice Mintz at Fox Chase Cancer Center from 1979 to 1980 and with Prof. John Baxter at UCSF from 1980 to 1983. He served as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Microbiology at USC School of Medicine from 1983 to 1985 and, in 1986, joined the Department of Pharmacology at UCSD School of Medicine, where he rose through the ranks to become a Distinguished Professor until his retirement in 2024. That same year, Karin joined the Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Research Institute as the Director of the Center for Metabolic and Liver Diseases.

Throughout his academic career, Karin investigated stress and inflammation signaling, employing a full range of experimental approaches from biochemistry and molecular cell biology to animal pathophysiology. By discovering how infection, inflammation, radiation, or environmental stressors activate AP-1, NF-κB, and other transcription factors, he explored how these processes contribute to the pathogenesis of cancer, as well as degenerative and metabolic diseases. His group elucidated fundamental mechanisms by which inflammation and obesity promote tumor development and contribute to type II diabetes and insulin resistance, and was among the first to highlight the role of inflammation in metabolic disease.

Karin’s group established how members of the IL-6 cytokine family control the development of colorectal (CRC) and liver (HCC) cancers through activation of STAT3 and YAP, and identified cell type–specific mechanisms by which NF-κB activation via IκB kinases (IKK)—which his group was the first to discover—affects the pathogenesis of various cancers. His research also demonstrated that not only innate immune cells, such as macrophages, but also adaptive immune cells, including T regulatory cells and B lymphocytes, contribute to tumorigenesis. This body of work helped to establish the field of Inflammation and Cancer.

More recently, Karin’s group demonstrated the existence of immunosuppressive plasma cells and their role in negatively regulating immunosurveillance and immunotherapy. His current work focuses on HCC, CRC, and pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC). The team has developed robust mouse models for studying non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH)-induced HCC and chronic pancreatitis–accelerated PDAC, using them to discover how adaptive immunity controls HCC development and to investigate the role of the autophagy substrate p62 in inflammation and HCC/PDAC pathogenesis. They discovered that activation of the p62–KEAP1–NRF2 cascade confers resistance to autophagy inhibitors, leading to the development of a new PDAC and HCC therapeutic approach targeting autophagy and macropinocytosis. These mouse models have also been used to study how metabolism and nutrition affect NASH and HCC development, with a focus on the adverse effects of fructose and alcohol intake and exposure to toxicants.

	Peter TONTONOZ (University of California, Los Angeles, USA) Lecture Date & Time: May 29 (Fri), 13:50-14:30, Room 205 Title: New Pathways in Lipid Metabolism

[Biography]
Peter Tontonoz is the Frances and Albert Piansky Endowed Chair and Distinguished Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine and of Biological Chemistry at the University of California, Los Angeles. Dr. Tontonoz received his B.A. from Wesleyan University and his M.D. and Ph.D. from Harvard Medical School.

Dr. Tontonoz’s laboratory endeavors to understand regulatory pathways that govern cholesterol, fatty acid and phospholipid metabolism. His work has helped to reveal fundamental mechanisms by which animals maintain cellular and whole-body lipid homeostasis. His group has elucidated pathways for the control of lipid uptake, transport and efflux, and has shown how these pathways impact the function of immune cells and metabolic tissues in both physiology and disease. Dr. Tontonoz has an h-index of 117, has published more than 250 research articles, and his work has been cited more than 73,000 times.

Dr. Tontonoz is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Medicine, the American Society of Clinical Investigation, and the Association of American Physicians. He has received a number of national and international awards, including the Stanley J. Korsmeyer Award from the American Society of Clinical Investigation, the Basic Science Award and Jeffrey Hoeg Award from the American Heart Association, the Richard Weitzman and Gerald D. Aurbach Awards from the Endocrine Society, and the J.C. Fruchart Award from the International Atherosclerosis Society. Dr. Tontonoz serves on a number of editorial boards, including those of PNAS, Genes & Development, the Journal of Clinical Investigation.

	Gou Young KOH (IBS/KAIST, Korea) Lecture Date & Time: May 29 (Fri), 14:50-15:30, Room 205 Title: Meningeal lymphatics: A Novel Pathway for Brain Clearance

[Biography]
Over the past three decades, Prof. Gou Young Koh has devoted his career to discovering and elucidating growth factors that regulate the microvasculature, including those that shape tumor vessels. He and his research team have made a number of influential advances and breakthroughs in the fields of angiogenesis and lymphangiogenesis. Notably, they engineered several potent modulators of angiogenesis—three angiopoietin-based proteins: COMP-Ang1, DAAP, and ABTAA—arising from their blinding insights and inventive strategies. Koh has also made seminal contributions to defining why tumor vasculatures are leaky, hypoxic, unstable, and drug-impermeable; to normalizing tumor vessels with a Tie2 activator to delay tumor growth and metastasis; and to identifying the roles of VEGF-A/VEGFR2, VEGF-C/VEGFR3, and angiopoietin/Tie2 signaling in governing organotypic angiogenesis and vascular homeostasis. Recently, he has been leading landmark work revealing essential regulators that preserve the integrity of specialized lymphatic vessels, including the meningeal lymphatics and their connections that enable CSF drainage. In recognition of his exceptional scientific achievements and lasting impact on biomedical research, he has been honored with the Kyung-Am Prize (2011), the Asan Award in Medicine (2012), the Samsung Ho-Am Prize in Medicine (2018), and the Top Scientist Award of Korea (2023).

Special Lecture

	KoonHo RHA (NAVER CARE, Korea) Lecture Date & Time: May 29 (Fri), 15:50-16:20, Room 205 Title: Digital Healthcare 2026: The Era of Generative AI Co-organized by

[Biography]
Dr. Koon Ho Rha is the Director of NAVER Healthcare Lab, Korea. NAVER is Korea’s premier IT company, services include search engine, on-line shopping (NAVER SHOPPING), fintech (NAVER PAY), Cloud services (NAVER CLOUD) and entertainment (eg. WEBTOON).

Before joining NAVER in 2021, Dr. Rha was Professor of Urology and Robotic and Minimally Invasive Surgery Center. He received both his premedicine education magna cum laude and his M.D. degree from the Yonsei University, Seoul. Dr. Rha was trained during his urological rotating residency training at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. He underwent fellowship training in minimally invasive and laparoscopic surgery at the Johns Hopkins Medical Institution as Engineering and Urology endowed fellow, and served as visiting Assistant Professor in Urology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. During his stay, he also completed “Business in Medicine” a 1-year MBA program at the School of Business Administration and Education.

In 2005 at Yonsei University Dr. Rha set up the East Asia’s first robotic surgery program which now has the most robotic cases as a single hospital in the world with 35,000 cases. During next 15 years, Dr. Rha has performed the most cases in Asia with more than 3700 cases of robotic cases. Dr. Rha also led Korean surgical robot clinical trial which resulted in KFDA approval in August 2017. He has given more than 550 lectures on robotic surgery and performed live surgery or proctored more than 60 occasions in 15 countries including US, China, Japan, Taiwan, Czech Republic, Singapore, Hong Kong, Saudi Arabia, India, Malaysia, Italy, Kuwait, Vietnam and France. Dr. Rha has more than 350 peer-reviewed scientific publications on minimally invasive urological surgery.

On administrative side, he has served as the Associate Dean of Faculty Affairs, Chief Operating Officer and the Chief Strategy Officer at Yonsei University Health System which now serves as foundation of basic knowledge at NAVER Healthcare Lab developing various innovative, AI -based healthcare services.